Humble Pie: A week of cooking fails

Last week was a total fail in the cooking department. It was, as my college roommates and I liked to say, a big fat piece of humble pie. Just when you think you're getting this whole homemaking thing down... No you're not.  Get out a fork, here's a nice big slice of humble pie. 

Fall is my favorite favorite favorite time of year. Cooler weather, sweaters, boots, and perhaps most importantly... PUMPKIN flavored things! So when I had the bright idea to swap out the banana for pumpkin in my favorite Banana Muffins (from my Food for Thought  post), I was pretty excited. I made the same exact muffins, but substituted canned pumpkin for the bananas and used pumpkin spice instead of cinnamon. I even thought to myself, this is my OWN recipe! How exciting! I'll photograph it and put it on my blog! But when the muffins came out of the oven, this is what I got:

Looks harmless right? Wrong. I have never in my life tasted a worse muffin. Not only did these muffins have a strange unidentifiable taste and companion nasty aftertaste, every few chews there was a distinct gritty texture. Gritty like, is there sand in this muffin? Did I drop this muffin on the beach? Bad. And the worst part... I still powered through and ate one of these muffins (or as much of it as I could choke down) every morning all week. Bleh.

On to fail number two. As if the taste buds hadn't suffered enough, I attempted on Tuesday to make a clean eating chicken and dumplings in the crock pot.  This is how it turned out:

The best part was, I made this for Jonnie to eat for dinner since I had D group that night and would be eating with the girls. Poor guy.  When I got home, I asked him how it was, and he said, "I have no idea what I just ate." That was supposed to be our dinner the following night as well, and needless to say we ate out instead. 

Nothing like some big time flops to keep a girl grounded. Looks like I'm still a domestic diva in training, and that's alright with me. In the meantime, there's always Chick-Fil-A. Who's up for a nice slice of humble pie?

A name for the blog!

I finally decided on a name for the blog!  After much thought about what I really want to say here, I realized that I want to share honest thoughts, successes and failures, projects and explorations, recipes and tips, and just a window into our everyday life.  I’m aspiring to make my home a beautiful place and my marriage a place of comfort and joy.  I’m looking to be fit and healthy and fill our plates with food that is good and good for you.  The desire of my heart is to create a Delightful Dwelling for me and my husband (and one day our children!).

I believe that God has created me as a woman to love beauty and seek to make beautiful the things that are around me.  I believe that God has given me the responsibility to make our house a home - a place of refuge and respite.  Finding a new recipe that is good for the body and the taste buds or repurposing an old piece of furniture are small things that make me come alive, and I want to share those things with you.

We believe that God is our ultimate Dwelling Place.  Psalm 91:9-11 says:

“Because you have made the LORD your dwelling place—
the Most High, who is my refuge—

no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
no plague come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.”

We believe that true joy is found in the Lord, and that he is everything we need for a fulfilled life.  Psalm 37:4 says:

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

We want everything we say and do to be a reflection of the love and grace that God gives to us so freely every day.  As I seek to fulfill God’s calling for my life in creating this humble Delightful Dwelling that we call home, I hope to glorify Him in it all and share His love with you!

Drumroll please.... A Delightful Dwelling! 

Summer Furniture Projects

I LOVE love LOVE the fall.  I love the leaves changing, the weather cooling, the pumpkin-flavored goodies, the CLOTHES! and even the football.  I have my boots lined up in my closet ready to go, sweaters in tow, and scarves waiting.  I even tried to wear a scarf today (it was cool this morning, I swear), but by mid-day with temperatures reaching the upper 80s... it was pretty sweltering.  All that to say, come on fall!!!

I did take advantage of the somewhat less scorching heat by resuming my furniture projects today!  It was really fun at the beginning of the summer, fun enough to push through the sweat and Georgia heat.  But come July in the dirty south... I just can't stand to be outside for more than 5 seconds, much less exerting myself.  Hence a hiatus from furniture projects.

I did manage to do a couple projects at the beginning of the summer that I have not posted, so here they are now!

BEFORE:  This was a chest of drawers that was at my in-laws house.  After I refinished it, we found out it was a part of Jonnie's baby room.  Aww.  It had been painted a couple times since then, and had some knobs mysteriously missing.

AFTER:  This is in our "breakfast nook" type area and houses all of our office supplies.  I wanted to do a fun pop of color, so I went with Behr Arizona (a match for AS Arles).

I even re-lined the drawers with some pretty drawer liner I had laying around.  Then in a sudden bust of creativity, I had the thought to make a pretty matching picture frame with the scraps and a frame I got at the thrift store!

Too bad I didn't realize the frame was 5x7.  Who has 5x7s??  I still haven't put a photo in this frame but it's the thought that counts, right?

Another project that my friend Mallory helped me with this summer was a coffee table for our good friend Laura.

BEFORE:  

Shiny oaky coffe table.

AFTER:

 

Shabby chic coffe table!  This is Behr Outback (A match for AS Versaille).

Super cute in their living room!

So there they are.  I'm currently working on a hutch/china cabinet that took FOREVER to paint today.  Totally exhausted but I think it's going to be really pretty.  Tonight calls for some fro yo for sure!  

Food for Thought

I would say that I have a love-hate relationship with food.  I love eating... but like many people, my food choices can get me into major trouble with the way they make me feel and of course, the weight they make me gain.  I enjoyed the fast metabolism of my teenage years, but as my age increased in my twenties... my metabolism of course did not follow suit and began to fall.  After a family cruise in December of 2010, I hit a number on the scale that I had never seen before, and I finally realized my no-discipline, enjoy food no matter what philosophy was going to have to change.

In 2011, I lost 20 pounds on the Weight Watchers program.  I can't say enough good things about Weight Watchers!  The program taught me HOW to eat well and how to cook well rather than confining me to a strict diet to follow.  It worked so well that after I lost the 15 pounds that was my original goal, after I quit Weight Watchers officially I lost another 5 pounds just from the healthy habits I picked up!  I would absolutely recommend Weight Watchers to anyone looking to get a kick-start in their weight loss goals.

Recently to keep the discipline in my life alive, I tried keeping up with my calories on My Fitness Pal (another great and FREE weight loss tool), but honestly counting calories makes me go into semi-eating disorder mode.  Suddenly it's about beating the strict number on the screen rather than feeding your body what it needs.  I found pleasure in keeping my calories low and hit a mountain of guilt any time I screwed up.  Not a good situation.  I realized that for me, my focus simply needs to be on being HEALTHY - eating food that is good for me and exercising often.

So... since my Weight Watcher days, I noticed that foods such as produce (most of which have no Points Plus values) and things straight from nature are the basis for a healthy diet.  All the processed stuff has so many added chemicals and un-pronouncable ingredients, empty calories, and little nutritional value.  At the store we try to stick to the perimeter of the store, only grabbing produce, meats, dairy, etc.

After a little bit of research this morning, I realized that this philosophy I try to eat by is called "Clean Eating," and I found an awesome website full of  Clean Eating Recipes called "The Gracious Pantry."  I got so excited by the recipes that I tried three of them today!

For Breakfast:  Clean Eating Banana Muffins
I realized that the processed cereal that I eat every morning is loaded with sugar and doesn't keep me full until lunch (or even my mid-morning snack at work!).  I am going to try these muffins this week in the morning with a handful of blueberries!  These muffins turned out so pretty and they are tasty!  I used whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour, and I topped them with walnuts.

For Lunch:  Clean Eating Chicken Salad

I made this recipe for lunch today including the clean Ranch dressing from scratch!  It was delectable, especially if you like dill!  I ate it on Kroger whole wheat crackers... totally not "clean" (the ingredient list is a mile long) but hey you gotta start somewhere.

For Snack:  Clean Eating Granola
I accidentally cooked it for a wee bit too long, but it's still really good!  I'm going to mix it with walnuts and almonds and keep it in baggies at my desk at work for a quick, healthy, and protein-packed snack.

It's been a long afternoon in the kitchen and the dishes were piled to the ceiling... but hey it's worth it to have some wholesome food to eat!  And now I have this stuff ready to go for the week ahead for on-the-go meals!

Anyone else practice Clean Eating?  Have any good recipes?  Send them my way!!!

Natalie

Furniture Frenzy!

The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic with the Geigers!  Road Rules, the summer mission trip for middle school students, came and went like a blur during the second week in June.  When I got back, the next week I went with Jonnie on his business trip to Stone Mountain, which was hilarious because that's where we are both from (so I got to spend some good time with my mom and dad!).  In between, we somehow managed to shoot three weddings for The Guestbox (the wedding video business I work for on the side, check it out) and get a couple of those videos edited.  Whew!

Also somehow in the midst of those couple weeks I thought it would be fun and stress-relieving to add in a couple of furniture projects... not sure about my logic on that one but it was nice to take my mind of some of the busyness (by making myself more busy?).  Nonetheless I have two more furniture projects complete to share that I am just thrilled about!

The first one is an entertainment unit we found on Craigslist for $50.  I forgot to take the before picture before I took the doors off the thing... so picture this with doors:

You can't really see, but the top is pretty scratched up and the little side cabinets are actually CD racks on rollers on the inside.  We were able to remove the racks and the tracks for them and voila!  Extra cabinet space.

I wanted to do a cheery color to go in my living room which has lots of browns in addition to some teal and burnt orange.  I went with Behr "Gulf Winds" which is a match for Annie Sloan "Provence."  Again I used Mallory's technique of adding baking soda to the paint to give it the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint feel.

I've found that the trial size of the Behr paint is enough for one of the projects which is awesome because that is cheap!   The only material cost of these projects now that I've bought paintbrushes, wax, cheesecloth, etc is for the paint (less than $3) and a new sanding block (less than $4), so the total for the project supplies is about $7!  Not too shabby!

Here's how it turned out after painting, sanding, distressing, waxing, and spray painting the knobs in the hammered metal paint:

Cute!  So we bring it inside, set it in our living room and realize... the TV that we want to put on it has to easily weigh several hundred pounds.  The thing is mammoth.  I mean unliftable.  So Jonnie called over our good friend Matt and together they somehow managed to lift the thing onto its new home!

So there she is in the corner, supporting the weight of the heaviest TV on the planet.  If you look closely you can see our antenna to the left (that's right folks, antenna).  I have board games in the skinny cabinets and all of our router stuff in the glass cabinet part (as well as our printer which had no home before now).  I wish I had a before picture of the TV on a coffee table with the mess of wires and madness beneath it.  This is muuuch better!  But I have GOT to do something to cover the plug next to the fireplace!!!  I have been racking my brain to think of something.  A basket?  A treasure chest?  A plant?  A margarita machine?

More pictures to come of the other project!

Furniture Refinishing - Take One!

My friend Mallory is really crafty and inspired me to try my hand at furniture refinishing!  So last weekend I ventured out into the world of Craigslist and stumbled upon a buffet for $25.  When I contacted the seller, she said it was "all wood" and "antique."  Sounds great right?  So Jonnie and I hopped in the truck and headed over to Smyrna to pick up our first Craigslist purchase.  I have to admit we both were a little skeptical and hoping we were not going to be kidnapped, but we did indeed survive our encounter.

This is what it looked like from the Craigslist picture:

When we got there, she had taken out all the drawers for "easy moving."  After inspecting it, we realized it was definitely not real wood... and the back of the thing was a piece of cardboard stapled on.  Although it wasn't what I had in mind, I decided it would be a good "starter piece" and we hauled it to the truck.  It wasn't until then that we discovered... half of the drawers didn't fit into their homes.  Nowww we see why she had them taken out...

Because I am incredibly impatient and couldn't wait for Mallory's help and advice, I went ahead and googled "refinishing furniture" and decided to paint it black, since my dining room table is black.  I went to Home Depot, got all my supplies, sanded the buffet, primed it, painted it, painted it again... and hated it.  Darn my impatience!  Here's what it looked like:

It wasn't SO bad, but it was just boring.  And the imperfections were really obvious.  At this point I had Mallory over to rescue me.  Apparently she had a method of painting that involved no pre-sanding, no priming, little dry time, and awesome results.  Hmm.  Should have waited!  But we decided the black would look cool under the new color (Behr Cathedral - a match for Annie Sloan Aubusson Blue).  So she helped me and it turned out super cute!  Here is the finished product:

So that's it!  I'll post more details about the painting process if it's successful with my next project.  I think it turned out cute and adds a fun pop of color to my black dining room!

Maybe I'll be crafty after all!

I'm back!

After a staggering two year break from blogging (where DOES the time go?!), I got inspired and now I'm baaaack!  I just completed my first DIY home improvement project, and I decided that the blogosphere is in need of just one more person blogging about that type of thing.  I'd also like to share awesome recipes as I discover them as well as musings from our hectic yet ridiculously blessed life.

Jonnie and I have now been married for two and a half years!  Again, where does the time go??  It is really fun to read the last posts on this blog and remember what it was like during that first year of marriage.  I'd love to share on this blog the lessons we've learned and continue to learn as we grow with each other.  But more on that later!

We've since moved out of apartment life and into a rental home!  Still one bathroom... but we mastered the art of sharing in our one bed/one bath apartment the first two years of marriage.  But now we have so much more space, actual ROOMS as opposed to the combination kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry room we previously had.  We used to joke that it was like that place out west where you can stand in one spot and be in 4 states at once.   We are loving our house, and since we decided we just might stay here another couple years, I'm getting into decorating frugally and do-it-yourselfy.  It is laughable that I think I have time for these projects - I am currently a full-time youth director and also doing a part-time video shooting and editing for my unbelievably talented friend and wedding business mogul (that's right).  But I have found that these home improvement projects are really fun, soothing, and something to take my mind off of stresses such as the 42 middle school students I am taking on a 6 day road trip this weekend... more on that later as well.

So here goes nothing... back in the blog world!  Let's keep it up this time.  I'll share pictures of my first project that I just completed soon!